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We have a new PM and yet again its absolutely no one that anyone other than the 160,000 worst people in the country would want anywhere near power. Welcome to the stage Liz Truss. No it’s over here. No that’s the way out. Oh well. The podcast returns from its summer break in time to herald the new but exactly the same and yet also worse era of Truss, give some handy tips to save money on your energy bill and have a chat with RMT rep Tony Collins (@tontytrains) about union action.

Key links and sources of info from Tony’s interview:

• Tony Collins on Twitter – https://twitter.com/tontytrains
• Donate to the RMT National Dispute Fund – https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/national-dispute-fund 

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• Get 15% off at British Boxers with the code in the episode – https://british-boxers.com 
• Nowtflix – http://nowtflix.co.uk
• Twitter – twitter.com/ParPolBro and twitter.com/TiernanDouieb   
• Facebook – www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro  
• Website – www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast 
• Donate to the Patreon – www.patreon.com/parpolbro 
• Buy me a coffee – ko-fi.com/parpolbro 
• Review the show on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2  
• Review the show on Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/partly-political-broadcast 
• The Last Skeptik – www.thelastskeptik.com 
• Kat on Twitter – https://twitter.com/chronicleflask 
• Buy Kat a coffee (go on, spread the love) – https://ko-fi.com/katday 

Transcript

Ep282

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics show where like the new denizen of No.10 declares about herself, what you see is what you get, which is why this is only audio with zero visual content. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as the new leader of the Conservative Party and thus – because of our democratic system that only allows 160,000 of the worst people a say – also Prime Minister is announced as being Liz Truss, a woman with all the charm of a multiple vehicle collision, at least we know she has a vision for Britain. Unfortunately, it’s a selfie of her cosplaying Thatcher and using a filter that fails to not make her look another other than ill and laminated at the same time.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, those words when said aloud feel not unlike being in need of a blood transfusion and having the doctor tell you ‘I’m sorry, all we have is this old bottle of Sunny Delight that someone’s taken a piss in’. It’s like if in Lord of the Rings The Two Towers, when Gandalf arrives with the Riders of Rohan at Helms Deep to save the day, it had instead just been a bloated tortoise who rolled down the cliffside before shinning Frodo. Or in Avengers Endgame where Captain Marvel shows up, if she had been replaced by a low, frequently changing in tone and clearly uncomfortable fart. In the hour of Britain’s need, we have been sent the only person left in the office and that’s because she got stuck in the printer room and couldn’t find the exit despite there only being one door. She is not the Prime Minister we need and I’m not even sure she’s the one we deserve unless life is a computer game and we’ve made our way through all the other end of level bosses and now reached the one the designers didn’t think anyone would survive to so didn’t bother developing her properly. This is what we’ve been sent in our hour of need and ideally we could scrawl ‘no longer at this address please return to sender’ and send her back immediately.

It is not an understatement to say that Britain feels like just weeks away from becoming an island sized historical re-enactment park, where visitors will row over from France, before docking their boat amongst the turds, to see what it was like when people had no electricity, heating or food but they did have polio and were forever in fear of imaginary threats such as not believing in the country hard enough, or the woke, who these strange oldy worldy people fear would get them in the night and they’d rise the next day to find they suddenly had pronouns or an appreciation for historical accuracy. If you did just a quick check list, the country has beaches so covered in shit we should change the song to be ‘Stool Britannia, Britannia stools the waves.’ We will soon have energy bills that will be so costly the only hope is the sheer anger of reading your statement may heat you up for free for a few hours. Inflation is stupidly high, we are collapsing into a recession, everyone is having to go on strike and it’s a 12 hour wait for an ambulance. They say it’s always the darkest before the dawn but I’m not sure that counts for a country where, turning the lights on in winter will need you to take out a bank loan first and then it’ll be rendered useless by the predicted black outs in January anyway. But maybe that is why the only person to lead us through this is someone that would have done it blindly even with the lights constantly on? Which I’m not sure hers are and there’s definitely no one home either way.

Of course, it’s not like we had much of a choice. If it wasn’t Truss, then it’d have been former chancellor Rishi Sunak, a man who’s so rich his sense of empathy and morals are stored offshore, possibly off planet. The leadership campaigns seemed to be constant one upmanship on who could promise the worst most evil policy, to a point where I wondered if someone needed to say their demon names so the game could end, and they could return to the underworld. Sunak said he’d cut unnecessary EU laws that we still use in Britain, Truss followed by saying she’d scrap all existing EU laws and take us out of the European Court of Human Rights. Truss said she’d expand the Rwanda policy, Sunak said he’d stick migrants on cruise ships which having heard about cruises, would actually be even worse than detention centres or countries with awful human rights records. God forbid he’d also make them also do comedy shows to the same elderly racist audience several nights in a row. Rishi Sunak made racist jokes about himself, and Liz Truss said she is ready to press the nuclear button. Which actually based on how things are going, might be the one positive of her winning as if she did, then at least we wouldn’t have to pay extortionate heating bills anymore as the country would be glowing warm for quite some time. It did feel as though had the contest gone on for another 4 more excruciating weeks that Sunak would’ve promised to make everyone the party didn’t like walk into the sea, while Truss would’ve insisted she’d have drowned them with her bare hands. But Sunak didn’t win, because he’s Asian and a number of Tory voters would’ve preferred to vote in a potato rather than someone who wasn’t white. I mean, in a way they did exactly that. And I have to say, it was great seeing Sunak lose something other than £11bn of public money. He would’ve been a fucking terrible leader, with his endless posts showing him failing to do ordinary things as he tried to have a conversation with a post box or trying to drive his car onto the tube, all the while insisting no one needed help with the cost of living crisis because he’s got an initiative where if you buy a government NFT you get 50p off a Boots meal deal, that you then have to pay back three weeks later. Now he’s lost who he says he will support the new Conservative government, which means probably donate large sums to it so his wife can continue to avoid tax.

Of course, Liz Truss will be a fucking terrible leader. It’s hard to say how terrible because her first speech after winning the leadership contest, was the political version of John Cage’s 4’44” but without any of the self-awareness or artistic intention. She said she campaigned as a Conservative and will govern as a Conservative, which if that has any meaning just indicates that like the last twelve years of Tory governance, she’ll do absolutely fuck all to help anyone but the donors. Truss said she will deliver on the National Health Service, but she didn’t say what she’d deliver on them so it could well be a series of death threats. Then she thanked outgoing Prime Minister and oh dear a doctor accidentally did a birth certificate for one of those dermoid cysts with teeth and hair Boris Johnson for getting Brexit Done, which he didn’t, for standing up to Vladimir Putin which I assume he must’ve done at one of the parties he was invited to, and saying he was admired from Kyiv to Carlise which isn’t very much of a geographical distance, doesn’t include most of the UK and a large amount of it is sea. Which is now filled with poo. And that was it. She just kept saying we will deliver, we will deliver. Though that’s possibly an insight into what she thinks may need to happen if she removes more working rights and the postal workers have to continue to go on strike.

From her time as Trade Secretary and then Foreign Secretary we know that her main skill is getting deals that are exactly the same as they were before, but worse. From her time as Environment Secretary we know she adores pork markets. From her time as Justice Secretary, we know she hates judges for upholding the law, and from her time as Women and Equalities Minister we know she doesn’t like those either. From the past few weeks, we have gathered that she does have plans for things, but she doesn’t want to say what any of them are and you wouldn’t know them anyway as they go to another school. We know that when asked if French President Macron was friend or foe she said the Jury’s out, thought she could have just meant mentally for her. She seemed keen to scrap the speed limit on motorways because if you’re going to have a car crash premiership may as well do it for real. She wants farmers producing food, not solar panels which I think she assumes is what sunflower seeds turn into. Truss thinks it’s fair to give the wealthiest people higher tax cuts because it’s wrong to look at everything through the lens of redistribution, and probably why she only looks at everything through the lens of her phone’s camera and various filters. The new PM says she’ll do away with sticking plasters and kicking cans down the road, which sounds like more cuts to the NHS and a ban on kids having any fun at all. And there will be a plan for energy bills by the end of the week. What is it? No one knows. It might be to freeze energy prices, but with her record so far its likely it’ll turn out to actually be that people must freeze to uphold prices. Or with suggestions that she wants to overhaul employment law, maybe the idea is that everyone works for 24 hours a day and then can use the heating in their office and save money on home bills. By dying from overworking and then never having to pay for anything again. What’s more likely is Truss will declare an energy crisis as woke and deny its even happening then say anyone who dies from the cold isn’t being patriotic enough. Currently all rumours for her cabinet look like a competition entry for the worst possible person to be put in that job championships, but one that was rejected for being just too distasteful. Then again, it worked for her. Oh and rumours suggest she might be facing infighting from Tory MPs, so that’s something to think about and help you remember what’s really important as you fight off hyperthermia. Priti Patel, who will be fine in December without heating due to being completely cold blooded, has already resigned as Home Secretary. Though it could be that she ran out of people of colour to remove without warning and had to take herself down to satiate the need. She’ll likely be wrestling herself onto a plane at midnight without legal consent. Upright slug Lord Frost is now not going to be in Truss’s cabinet after talks over his position broke down. Turns out he can’t even do successful negotiations about his own job.

Truss said during an interview on the flagship show for Laura Kuenssberg, a woman who is to political journalism what copying someone else’s homework is to studying, that it is wrong to predict the future. Well, it is much easier to predict the past as its already happened. Even though most Conservatives still like to rewrite it anyway. But that must be why she gives us no clues as to what it will hold with her in charge. Or more likely, it’s because she has no idea and will make it up on the spot as she goes along. Regardless, here is how I think it will pan out:

Tomorrow, September the 6^th, Truss will go to Balmoral to meet the Queen and be made Prime Minister. I don’t like the royals but if this is a Red Wedding style plan from her maj I will become a staunch royalist.

September 12^th, Liz Truss will be declared as officially missing 24 hours after arriving at Balmoral.

September 30^th, she is found lost in one of the toilets in the castle’s West Wing, unable to find the door and surviving on toilet water and chewing bits of loo roll.

Oct 4^th, after recovering with several £3000 breakfasts, Truss declares that castles are woke and tries to pass laws to have them banned.

Oct 8^th – Failing to ban castles she tries to have all doors and rooms banned and says a real Britain would be entirely outdoors, which is also her plan for reducing energy bills.

Oct 14^th, Liz Truss gets lost outdoors standing still in one place. She declares places as woke and tries to have them banned, unironically declaring true British people as citizens of nowhere.

Oct 16^th, After seeing her ratings drop even more, Truss decides to deport all British people as they obviously aren’t really British or they’d like her. She replaces the army with pigs who she says are her real friends and makes them all special hats.

Oct 22^nd, the pigs get sick of Liz Truss and find footage of her bigging up pork markets so they all walk into the sea of their own accord. Liz Truss is the only person left in the UK but isn’t aware of this as she can’t find her way out of her room.

Nov 1^st, Truss names her new new cabinet and includes a wedge of cheese she’s calling Derek Cheddary and has drawn a face on him. He’s given the title of Secretary of State for All the Things Over There. Nadine Dorries is still culture secretary.

Nov 12^th, Derek Cheddary goes mouldy but Truss says she still has confidence in him.

Nov 13^th, Derek Cheddary is stolen by mice. Truss immediately declares war on mice.

Nov 14^th, after discovering mice live everywhere Truss hits the nuclear button without hesitation.

Nov 21^st, despite it seeming like the UK and one third of the world has been destroyed, Boris Johnson emerges from a fridge completely intacts. He proceeds to breed with the remains of furniture he finds and populates the country himself with a new species of hairy pillow people. Nadine Dorris is still Culture Secretary.

But you know, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, eh? At least hooray it’s another female prime minister which shows the Conservatives are better at equality than Labour, who last time all raced to vote for a man resembling an upright air vent over any female candidates. So progressive of the Tories, right? Nothing promotes feminism or indeed overall equality like letting people know that anyone of any gender or ethnicity can also be an absolute abomination of human. They can’t be PM though unless they’re white and went to the right schools.

Boris Johnson has finally left No.10 Downing Street, though scientists reckon it may not be safe for anything to grow or reside there for at least 50 years, unless it is equally as toxic. The now fucking finally former PM spent his last two months as leader supporting the country like he did the rest of his premiership, by doing fuck all except go on holiday and running around in stupid costumes. His farewell tour of the UK seemed to involve partying with aides on his private plane, though sadly the pilot wasn’t also drunk or it might’ve been a worthwhile use of public money. During the tour he promoted building new nuclear power plants, comparing the cost saving to being like buying a new kettle which isn’t the most reassuring thing to hear from a man who couldn’t even make a cup of tea properly in his 2019 election campaign video. The Priviledges committee are still going ahead with their probe into whether Johnson committed a contempt of parliament by telling MPs there were no lockdown breaking parties at No.10. His lawyers are saying such a probe would be ruled unlawful by real judges, which you’d think would mean they and Johnson would back it and push ahead regardless of advice. The concern is if he is found of misleading parliament it could cause a by-election which would stop him running for Tory leadership again in future, something he’s been rumoured to consider as there’s every chance, he’ll need more wallpaper in a few years. Thing is, this is what happens with every Tory leadership. Remember with trapped in carbonite but carrying on anyway Theresa May, where

everyone suddenly thought that actually austerity king pig fucker David Cameron wasn’t the worst? Then Boris Johnson made many say actually Theresa May violently deporting the Windrush generation and leaving people in Grenfell homeless, were just a bit of fun in comparison to this lump. Could it be that after two months of Truss, the discourse will be ‘well he only let 150,000 people die, gave billions of pounds of contracts to mates, broke the law, lied endlessly and met secretly with one former KGB agent so you know…’ Well, we shouldn’t predict the future right? All I will say is that don’t forget one great way to keep warm this winter would be to riot. All the shouting and kicking gets the blood pumping and if enough of us are there we could huddle like penguins while being kettled and stay toasty for days. I’m not just saying that because I’m short and so would need to stay near the middle.

Lastly, former Met Police commissioner and the worst marmoset Cressida Dick said she was intimidated into resigning from her position. Oh shame. She should have totally waved down a bus driver for help.

ADMIN

Hey. Yes, I thought this show should probably come back in time to herald the moment we all knew everything was even more doomed than it has felt every week since, well, 4^th May 1979 probably. I wasn’t even alive then but I’m guessing its not really gone away since then. I do think Liz Truss as PM has some positives you know, like knowing that even if you have the brainpower of a dazed aphid, you can still get elected to power. And also, that there is a much slimmer chance of the Conservatives winning an election again with her in power. Which does of course have the caveat of us having to somehow survive until there is one, there still being some chance she might win and if she doesn’t, us getting a Labour government who are also monumentally shit, even if not quite as shit. The cheery nihilist in me does sort of feel like poo rivers, POOO RIVERS, feels just for the country right now. You don’t want to stay because its shit, but all the shit makes it hard to leave. I mean no one is doing one of those swimming the channel for charity now. Hey at least our waters will remain sovereign or something because no one is going to want to fish for dover sole when they could net a big turd. But look, I hope you’re ok. I think I’m ok but I’m so glad I took a break from this and watching the news for the summer to have a little go at being the dog in the ‘everything is fine’ meme. I am now back and ready to say swear words about all this for a while. Well, in-between getting my agent ready for school. She starts next week, which isn’t what we expected and stupidly took her out of nursery two weeks ago and so it’s been no childcare central here as we pretend it’s like lockdown only now we can’t go anywhere as its too expensive and we have to save all our money in order to boil an egg at some point in December. She is super excited about school which is great, and now I’ve just got that slight worry of really supporting teachers and hoping they do go on strike for better conditions but also please don’t just yet as I can’t play the same game with playmobil involving witches and princess for another day. It never ends and I just can’t. Thanks. Please think of me. Just me. You know. Over working conditions and rights. Oh God. Is this how people become Tory? It is isn’t it.

Cheers to those of you who patreon\d and ko-fi’d me over August, despite no podcasts at all. I’ve decided I’m gonna stop plugging those things on this show for now as frankly, everyone needs to be saving cash. I’ve seen a few of you have dropped off the patreon and I just want to say I WILL FIND YOU AND HUNT YOU DOWN, sorry I mean, that’s totally cool. We all need to save to boil one egg in December, I fully understand. Also if you do have endless cash, then best to use it for things like the RMT strikers fund as plugged later in this episode, or Pakistan relief funds or so many other better things rather than buying me crisps. Though I will need a lot of crisps to generate warmth in the winter. Thanks.

Other quick things. I’ve got several weeks of interviewees locked down which is exciting. Though I realised a lot of them since last May have all been white dudes. I do try to have a good representation amongst interviewees but that just hasn’t happened. I promise I haven’t gone all Jordan Peterson on you. What’s that, wanting teachers not to strike and only booking white male guests? What have you become? I just wanted to fit in with other podcast hosts ok. I’ve got to make this show popular somehow. But seriously, please do help by recommending guests or charities or groups that I should talk to that may help, that would be great. I may still start recommending you eat meat or chop wood or something just to see if I can draw some people in. I do neither of things but you know.

Also, Joe Lycett is brilliant and always has been, with a favourite of mine being when he once did a character called Peter Lindt who could only talk in sentences about types of chocolate. Anyway, he was so good on Kuenssberg’s otherwise fucking awful show and I’m so pleased how angry it’s made politics wonks and newspapers.

And lastly, if you have Apple TV for some weird reason then watch a program called Home and particularly episode 2 of season 1, which is about the artist Theaster Gates. I won’t say anymore but that’s basically the most inspirational thing I’ve seen in ages.

Right, let’s not mess about. This week’s guest is RMT union rep Tony Collins, and he was brilliant to chat to. But also I thought this week I should try and be as helpful and reassuring about the upcoming energy crisis as many politicians have been:

TIPS FOR HEATING YOUR HOME:

People are all bloody complaining about paying their energy bills but when I grew up in the ice age, we didn’t have any central heating and we all survived by dying. So frankly, young people should just toughen up and hunt woolly mammoths for their hide instead of ogling avocados and drinking what flights. But if you are worried, then firstly, you’re being unpatriotic. Secondly, here are some tips to reduce your energy bills that are totally doable for everyone to do doing no matter your class or species and I should know as I haven’t done any of them because I get my heating paid for on expenses and so do my horses.

• Get dressed in other people’s clothes, while they’re still wearing them.
• Swap milk on your cereal for lava. Really warms you up.
• Move to Venus.
• Get exposed to cosmic rays and gain powers to become a human torch.
• Get a pet dragon.
• Stand near any of the current politicians and be warmed by the considerable amounts of hot air they produce.

INTERVIEW WITH TONY

Unions. No, not what it’s called when a mythical horse like beast gets aroused. Instead it’s an organisation of workers intent on improving the conditions of their employment, or as politicians and most news outlets would have to believe rampant all powerful job pirates whose very existence causes economies to collapse and societal structures to implode because of their ludicrous demands for staff to be able to afford to eat from what they earn and not spend their days somewhere where the chances of getting by without injury are lower than on a medieval gauntlet run. Despite trade unions being historically, the reason why our working hours aren’t all of them and your kids aren’t currently down a chimney – well I mean unless they’re there by choice because you know, kids – they have been constantly demonised for sticking up for actual people which is totally against trend. I mean what would normal people do with money? Use it to survive instead of building a vanity space project while pissing on a burning earth? I mean not worth it mate. But what with times being absolute burning pigshit to put it poetically, and an opposition who are only really opposed to their own membership, unions are starting to be rightly seen as one of the main ways to face up to the government mostly wishing you were all dead. Or at least, without any working rights or enough money to have any sort of enjoyable life. The summer has seen a number of strikes from railway and transport workers, workers in the postal service, delivery drivers, barristers and soon, very likely, teachers, nurses, the fire brigade and many more, something as you can probably tell, I’m in full solidarity with but as someone who is self-employed, I can’t really strike as no one would be able to tell. A number of union leaders have gained support for their campaigns by going on the news by talking like normal people which completely threw everyone off. It turns out that sometimes to change a political system being able to say ‘this is nonsense’ is more powerful than judicial reviews, or quote tweeting with something sarcastic. If Liz Truss goes ahead with her proposed changes to working rights to make them more along the lines of the one’s ants have, then we could well see the country at an entire stand-still come mid-October. Hopefully. The narrative on unions is changing across the world too, even in the US where the idea of anything other than capitalism is usually considered as the enemy. Yet workers for companies such as Amazon have managed to unionise and fight for better conditions, probably just before penis with eyes Jeff Bezos had them working on the moon for nothing but the threat of removing their grav boots if they complained. So are we at a turning point? Could we be on the brink of a general strike? Will Liz Truss just refuse to believe it’s happening and spend six days on a non-moving train insisting it’ll get there if we all just believe in Britain more?

This week I spoke to Tony Collins who is a tube driver, RMT rep, and someone who is generally good on twitter about most politics stuff. I asked him just where he thinks it will go next, if people actually like unions again now and why normal people talking has broken through like it has. Tony very kindly spared time on his week off from work and week fully on repping to talk to me, and I should say that in this we mention both Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey, the former who I found out via tedious people on Twitter yesterday said something not great about Uyghur Muslims a few weeks ago and Dempsey has had some concerning things pop up about his affiliations too. These are things that I prob would’ve asked Tony about if I’d known them at the time, but also this is about the union movement as a whole and I’m aware that what often happens with all these things is demonising one or two figureheads to show actually all unions are awful and we’re all just better off letting Liz Truss heat her home with a bonfire of human rights. Anyway, hope you enjoy, here is Tony:

INTERVIEW WITH TONY

So pleased Tony had the time to chat, and hope you enjoyed that. You can find Tony @tontytrains on Twitter and obviously the RMT can be found at rmt.org.uk, @RMTUnion on twitter, Facebook and Instagram and most importantly the fund for striking workers is at rmt.org.uk/about/national-dispute-fund and I’ll pop all the links into the blurb too. Also big thanks this week to Raf aka @UncleTrash on Twitter who put me in touch with Tony and another upcoming guest. Raf has been hosting superb Twitter spaces about all sorts of political issues. I’ve been a silent listener as they often happen during our failed attempts to get my agent, sorry daughter, to bed, but hoping to join in one properly soon.

Who else would you like to hear from on here and about what? I’ve got a mini list of subjects that includes someone on climate stuff again, health stuff again, I mean basically revisiting all the subjects I’ve interviewed people about on here loads but they’ve all got worse. So specific ones would be great and are there other country’s politics you’d like to hear about? Lemme know and you can do that by messaging me in all caps on the @parpolbro Twitter, so I take you seriously or by emailing me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

END

And that is the end of this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast and depending on what Liz Truss does over the rest of the week, possibly the world. Still, maybe you’ll be hearing this as your last bit of audio as the sky goes fluorescent which frankly, I would consider a better use of your ears than saying cheerio to loved ones or smugly saying ‘I told you so’ into the radioactive dust clouds as they consume your face. Why not allow others this audio treat by recommending this here show for their podcast feeds. You could also give it a review on Apple podcasts or the like and pretend that means something, and if you have incredible amounts of riches and will be leaving the heating on endlessly till March with no fear, then maybe consider donating to the Ko-Fi and Patreon. Maybe.

Big warm but not too warm as that’s expensive thanks to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Liz Truss announces her big plan to deal with surging energy costs is to cut off all electricity and gas supplies to the country, replacing them instead with a daily singing of ‘oh my island in the sun’ and an insistence that we have to think about being warm and it’ll work in no time.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Truss Solutions. Got a problem that needs fixing? Call Truss solutions and we’ll tell you we’ll fix it, just you know, in a week. What is the solution? Ah well, it’s there it is and you know, it’ll work. But what is it though? Yes exactly. Truss Solutions, solving all your problems except those ones.

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